Sunday, January 9, 2011

My Bikes: Colossi TT

Another day, another new bike! Or so it seems... Hot on the heels of building my new Colossi XCR, came the delivery of my TT frameset- another custom frame I'd worked on with Jan to try and form a basis for a colossi.cc 'club' TT frame. I went for fairly aggressive geometry with a super short head tube and a fairly steep seat tube. Other details were internal cabling, integrated headset and horizontal drop outs- fixed style. This buys me some future proof flexibility to convert it into a track machine at some point in the future without lots of ugly unused cable guides. The solid 6061 oversized tubes certainly lends itself to power transfer first and comfort second, so I'm happy to have a solid frame that would certainly be just at home on the track as it is in it's current incarnation as a TT machine.

The build itself was an exercise in maximum function off minimal outlay. Most of the parts are spares / old parts I have hanging about- such as the Thomson mtb stem, and race / training wheels can double up from my road bike. A few specific purchases like Dia Compe TT levers were mixed with some eBay finds, such as a Chorus front mech, giving a machine that I'm happy was cheap enough to leave locked up outside for my commute (yes- it's not a purpose built commuter, but it is possible...). On the whole I'm pleased with how surprisingly co-ordinated it looks, and despite a few set up nuances to get right- such as the full length internal cable routing, the build has come together over the past few weeks.

The ride is pretty much as you'd expect- unforgiving, but fast. The bike only really makes sense 'on the rivet', on the flat. It's not set up for ironman ultra endurance (though there's no reason for it not to be) and it's not built for climbing (but it is possible). It's therefore quite a specific bike, but when you consider how little it cost vs. the TT bikes out on the open market, I think it was a downright bargain. Let's see how it goes in the upcoming TT races!